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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764035">When the World's Older</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/pseuds/partyghost'>partyghost (Arokel)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Duality of Alex [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Julie and The Phantoms (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alex was out in the 90s fight me, Bisexual Julie Molina, Coming Out, Gen, Queer History, Rated T for language</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:53:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,421</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764035</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/pseuds/partyghost</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex realizes, whether he likes it or not, that he's now officially old enough to be a queer mentor. Doesn't mean he has his shit together.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alex &amp; Julie Molina, Alex &amp; Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Duality of Alex [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031028</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>304</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>aka "the one where Alex was always okay with himself"</p><p>(I promise I'm not as old as this preachy ass fic makes me sound; I just like queer history.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Alex registers the door to the studio open and shut without much conscious thought. It’s probably Carlos, home from school and coming in to use the bathroom, because for some reason that kid has something against using the bathroom in his own house. It’s a daily thing, and Alex would be perfectly happy to sleep through it this day.</p><p>“Hey, Alex.”</p><p>It’s Julie, instead.</p><p>Alex hums, half-awake. His thighs ache in ways he didn’t think they <em>could </em>anymore. He could swear skateboarding hadn’t been this exhausting back in the nineties. But Willie cares about it, and Alex cares about Willie, and sore muscles are a small price to pay for seeing Willie look at him with pride instead of the guilt that’s plagued their friendship ever since the crossing-over-that-wasn’t.</p><p>“Can I ask you something?”</p><p>Alex opens his eyes. He thinks maybe this deserves his full attention, because that right there – that’s a bit odd. Julie never asks permission before asking questions. Not in the way Reggie doesn’t ask for permission, because he doesn’t realize there are some questions that <em>do </em>require a disclaimer, or in the way Luke doesn’t ask, because his desire to know is more important than anyone else’s comfort.</p><p>Julie doesn’t ask because her questions are always perfectly calibrated to fit the situation at hand, so she doesn’t <em>need </em>to. If she’s asking now, that means she isn’t sure she should.</p><p>“Yeah, sure, what?” Alex says, as casually as he can even though his nerves are sparking with unease. He can be chill; he <em>can. </em>He’s more tactful than Reggie or Luke. He can handle this.</p><p>But then Julie says, “is Luke here?” and Alex thinks, oh god, she’s going to ask for my blessing. Which is stupid, and he knows it as soon as he thinks it. It’s 2020, not 1920, and Julie is too self-assured to buy into all that patriarchal bullshit.</p><p>Unless she thinks <em>they </em>buy into that bullshit? Yeah, they can come across as kind of douchey sometimes, that’s true, but he hopes she knows that she’s not an outsider because she’s a <em>girl</em>; it’s just because she’s leagues more talented than they are and also <em>alive.</em></p><p>“It’s not about him,” she adds, because she is <em>also </em>a mind reader. “I just wanted to know if you were alone.”</p><p>“He’s out sightseeing with Reggie,” Alex says, chagrined. He’s always worn his worries on his face, but it’s still embarrassing that Julie can read them.</p><p>Luke and Reggie are sightseeing because Alex said he was hanging out with Willie, and Luke said they would vacate the studio for the afternoon <em>just in case</em> Willie wanted to come over, after. But while Alex would be totally down for that, he’s not one hundred percent sure Willie is, and he spent too much of ’94 crushing on a very touchy-feely straight boy to make any assumptions.</p><p>“Oh. That’s nice.”</p><p>Julie looks around the studio, eyes darting over the band setup like she’s changed her mind about her original question and is looking for a new one. Alex knows that look, and he’s not about to let her get away with it.</p><p>“What’s the question?”</p><p>Julie looks back to him, caught out. He didn’t give her time to think of a new one. But Alex is <em>very </em>familiar with this kind of backpedaling, and he knows what’s next.</p><p>“It’s not important,” she says, too quickly. “You were sleeping.”</p><p>“I was,” Alex agrees, “but now I’m not. So shoot.” He half-expects her to clam up, to back out of the studio and leave <em>him </em>with all the questions. He shouldn’t have.</p><p>In all the weeks he’s known her, Julie has never folded in the face of a challenge. She sets her shoulders, squares her jaw, and marches determinedly over to sit beside him on the couch – <em>so </em>determinedly, in fact, that she almost sits through him until she realizes his knees are still there. He’s forced to swivel his legs to the floor in an awkward sweep that wrenches at the already-sore muscles in his lower back.</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Okay,” he echoes.</p><p>The look Julie gives him is almost <em>defiant,</em> and Alex has no idea what to expect. What he’s definitely <em>not </em>expecting, though, is, “you’re gay, right?”</p><p>A frisson of residual panic slides down his spine, a remnant of the time when he still had to worry about what people thought when they looked at him. And of course he’s not worried about Julie, but he does <em>care </em>what she thinks about him, and that anxiety isn’t something you can shake entirely in only a few months.</p><p>He clears his throat. “Yeah.”</p><p>He probably looks as wary as he feels, because Julie says, “great, okay, that’s what I thought, but I didn’t want to assume. This would have been really awkward if you weren’t.”</p><p>It’s not already awkward? Maybe Julie just has a higher threshold for what counts as awkward. If Alex had been stood up by the band at a dance like Julie was, he’d have changed his name and switched schools.</p><p>“Thank god it’s not,” he says, helplessly. Julie levels him with an unimpressed stare. Yeah, okay, he deserved that. “Was that your question?”</p><p>“It was part one.” Alex is prepared to wait for part two, but she launches into it immediately, with a typical Julie-esque tenacity that Alex envies. “How did it go? When you came out to your – I mean, what was it like?”</p><p>Oh. It’s <em>this </em>conversation. Everything suddenly makes a whole lot more sense.</p><p>Alex is <em>not </em>equipped for this. He’s only come out to six people in his life, and one person after his death; he’s not qualified at <em>all </em>to give advice.</p><p>But Julie came to him, trusted <em>him</em>, and so he has to try.</p><p>“It was – “</p><p>How does he explain this? How does he communicate, to someone who wasn’t even <em>born </em>when he came out, how terrifying it was? Or maybe terrifying is the wrong way to start. Reassuring first, and then honest. “It wasn’t what you’re probably thinking. They didn’t throw me out, or yell at me, or say any hurtful shit. They were just… disappointed.”</p><p>Julie is quiet. Hesitant. “Disappointed?”</p><p>So maybe he didn’t quite achieve <em>reassuring. </em>Take two, then. Second verse, better than the first. “I mean, they still loved me. They told me they loved me. But that didn’t stop them from saying they wished I was different.” Huh, okay, maybe that was some hurtful shit. He’d been too grateful at the time to think of it as anything other than a relief, but in hindsight, yeah, that sucked. “They said it was because they didn’t want my life to be harder because I was gay, but… I could still tell.”</p><p>“Oh,” Julie says, softly. “I kind of thought…”</p><p>“That they’d beat the shit out of me? It was California. They weren’t about to join PFLAG, but they weren’t going to disown me, either.”</p><p>Julie looks confused. Alex might almost find it funny, if it didn’t also make him want to cry. It seems impossible that his decade, this history that he <em>lived through</em>, is just… gone. That Julie could think all there was to it was rampant homophobia. That none of the good parts made it into the history books. Alex had been too young, and too closeted, to know AIDS as anything other than a terrifying specter of what his future might hold, but knowing that there’s a whole generation of mentors missing, people who could have passed that history down, is devastating in a way he didn’t expect to be devastated this afternoon.</p><p>But then Julie says, “PFLAG?” and suddenly it <em>is </em>funny. It’s ridiculous, because Alex is seventeen, and here he is playing the queer mentor as if he’s at all qualified to do that.</p><p>“Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays?” He waits for recognition, but there is none. “You’ve never seen them at Pride?”</p><p>“Pride is basically just corporate floats now. And cops,” Julie says, making a disgusted face. Alex feels that face in his soul.</p><p>“<em>Cops? </em>Man, 2020 sucks. Pride used to be bitchin. Sorry, sorry, I know, not cool anymore,” he says, before Julie can remind him that slur-based slang is Not A Thing these days. “I just mean that it was a party.” Julie grins at him like she can tell that he’s kicking himself. He’s <em>trying</em>, okay? He’s way woke…er than Luke or Reggie. He also thinks that might not be a thing people say anymore either.</p><p>“I wish it was still like that,” Julie says. “I went with my dad last year and it was all just tech corporations pretending they care.”</p><p>“If your dad went to Pride, why are you worried about telling him?” Alex says, like an idiot. Immediately, he wishes he could take it back, as Julie’s face falls and she starts to backpedal again. She hasn’t even told <em>him</em>, and here he is invalidating her feelings without thinking. Idiot.</p><p>She plays with the hem of that big yellow sweatshirt she always wears when she’s sad or nervous. Alex should have realized she was wearing it sooner. “Cause like – I don’t know. I just – and like I know you had it way worse and me being scared is nothing like what you –“</p><p>“Hey, no,” Alex says. <em>This </em>is what he should have started with. Next time. “Coming out is always terrifying. I knew the band was going to be chill and I still couldn’t say it. We had to play twenty questions.”</p><p>Julie cracks a smile at that, like he hoped she would. “Who won?”</p><p>“Bobby, weirdly.” Although, hindsight, 20/20, that was probably because Luke and Reggie were trying to be diplomatic. But that’s not the point he wants to make. “Of course you’re nervous. I’m still nervous, and I’m dead. But your dad is the chillest dad I’ve ever met, and he loves you totally unconditionally. He would never be disappointed in you. Also, I think he already knows.”</p><p>Julie’s head snaps up, and yeah, there it is: the universal queer <em>what? how?? I didn’t even know </em>experience. Some things never change. That’s kind of a comfort, actually. “Why?”</p><p>“I heard him asking Carlos if your stage chemistry with Luke meant you liked boys now.” And probably offstage chemistry, too, but no way is Alex about to get in the middle of that. He already dodged one Luke-related bullet in this conversation, he’s not going to jump in front of another one.</p><p>“Oh my god, I’m going to die,” Julie groans, burying her face in her hands. Appropriately dramatic; Alex approves. “I mean, I do. Obviously. But I like girls too. Please don’t tell Luke I said that about him.”</p><p>“Please don’t tell Luke you said what about me?” Luke says, grinning wickedly and swinging himself down from the loft to land in an ungainly sprawl. “Sorry to interrupt your coming-out; we thought it was probably safe to come back.”</p><p>“<em>I </em>said we should knock,” Reggie grumbles, poofing down to the floor much more sedately.</p><p>The trajectory of Luke’s ever-evolving sprawl propels him to the couch, sandwiched between Alex and Julie, an arm around Alex’s shoulders and the other hovering on the back of the couch behind Julie. Smooth. “And <em>I </em>said there’s no way Alex had the guts to actually invite Willie over, not after that guy he was crushing on for all of ’94.”</p><p>Alex squawks in embarrassed indignation. He’s being <em>cautious</em>, not cowardly. And it wasn’t <em>all </em>of ’94. Just most of it.</p><p>“We tried to tell you, dude, but you were too busy being in the closet to listen to us. Anyway, I can’t believe we left you alone so you could make out with Willie and you somehow ended up doing something even gayer.”</p><p>“Bi, technically,” Julie says.</p><p>“Even queerer, then,” Luke says easily. “See, Alex, I know 2020 lingo too.”</p><p>“Absolutely no one says lingo today.”</p><p>“Well, they should.” Luke turns back to Julie, brows lowering in apology, and Alex feels very much like a third wheel, which is crazy because he and Luke are the two wheels that can actually physically touch each other. “Sorry if that wasn’t a conversation you wanted us to hear. We can pretend we didn’t, if you want.”</p><p>“Or we could play twenty questions again,” Reggie offers. “I would win this time.”</p><p>“We would all win, because we <em>already know the answer.</em>”</p><p>Julie ignores Reggie and Alex in favor of smiling at Luke. Subtle. “No, it’s okay. I kind of wanted to tell you guys myself, but… this works too.”</p><p>“Well, we’re flattered that we’re the first people you told,” Reggie says, which is… surprisingly tactful, for Reggie, even if it’s probably not true.</p><p>Until Julie laughs and says, “I told Flynn first,” which, of course.</p><p>Reggie makes a wounded noise and Luke does those sad puppy eyes that work on no one besides Julie, but Alex thinks, that’s pretty rad, actually. Would it have been cool to be the first person Julie trusted? Yeah, for sure. But he was the first person she went to for <em>camaraderie</em>, and that’s kind of worth more, in his opinion. Wise Queer Mentor Alex, at your service.</p>
<hr/><p>“Hey, Alex.”</p><p>Alex is awake this time, but he’s still startled by Julie’s voice. It’s possible that he doesn’t pay enough attention to his surroundings. “What’s up?”</p><p>Julie settles in beside him on the couch, her arm brushing his as she shifts. It’s a weird thing to get used to, being solid, but he wouldn’t trade the weirdness for anything. The hug thing hasn’t happened again yet, but he keeps holding out hope it will.</p><p>“I just wanted to tell you you were right.”</p><p>“About what?”</p><p>“My dad did know. And he made a joke about joining PFLAG, so. You were right about that too.”</p><p>Obviously Julie’s brotherly-love confession after the Orpheum was the thing that freed them, but Alex thinks this might be his own personal Julie-healing moment. He never could have imagined, at sixteen years old in 1994, sobbing out his fear and loneliness through Luke’s songs, that <em>he, </em>Alex, walking human disaster, could help someone else come out. Fucking wild.</p><p>“Of course I was. I’m an Elder Queer.”</p><p>Julie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, don’t ever say that again.”</p><p>“But it went well, right?” He’s <em>pretty </em>sure this means everything is fine, but Julie is also very good at covering up disappointment and sadness. He just has to check.</p><p>He shouldn’t have worried, because Julie’s grin is like sunshine itself. “It went great.”</p><p>Alex grins back. “Chalk one up for the twenty-first century.”</p><p>Oh. There’s the hug. Alex really has to revise his stated feelings on hugs, because the few he’s experienced since he regained corporeal form have been great. Or maybe that’s just Julie.</p><p>And you know what? This <em>is </em>hug-worthy.</p><p>So maybe he can’t quite shake his twentieth-century caution just quite yet. Maybe he can’t quite let himself believe that things will be okay if he does. But Julie has never known that caution, and even if he wasn’t around to be one of the people who fought so she wouldn’t, he can be happy for her anyway. And maybe take a leaf out of her book.</p><p>“Where’s everyone else?” Julie asks, only now registering that they’re alone.</p><p>“Willie’s coming over for a bit. Luke did his stupid eyebrow thing for at least five minutes before he and Reggie left.”</p><p>“<em>I </em>think the eyebrow thing is cute,” Julie says, disentangling herself from Alex and from the couch. She looks back over at her shoulder at him and attempts her own version of the eyebrow thing. It’s actually pretty successful. “Tell him I say hi. And, hey – if I can tell someone today, so can you.”</p><p>“Yeah, well. We’ll see.”</p><p>Even Julie’s “okay, <em>elder queer</em>” as she closes the door after can’t dampen his mood. The twenty-first century is pretty fucking rad, after all. And it’s hopefully about to get better.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>These conversations always seem to happen just outside the studio, Alex thinks. Not inside, where it’s safe, but out here in the open, exposed and vulnerable. At least these days the landscaping is a bit more lush than it was in the 90s and they’re partially hidden from the street.</p><p>Not that anyone on the street can see them, but it’s the <em>sense </em>of privacy that matters.</p><p>When he’s with Willie, it’s like no one else exists. It was nice of Luke and Reggie to give him space for this, and Julie, too, but part of Alex thinks that they could all be sitting on the steps right beside him and he wouldn’t even notice. Willie is the only thing he can really focus on.</p><p>He’s kind of done wondering if Willie feels the same way.</p><p>“So Julie came out to me,” Alex says, fiddling with a rip in his jacket. Overhead, a plane roars its way faintly towards LAX. He almost wishes it were louder, so maybe it could have drowned out the words he regrets even as he says them. He’s not as good at leaps of faith as she is.</p><p>But even if this is a momentous thing for Alex, a terrifyingly big deal, Willie acts like it’s easy, too. “Really? Dude, that’s awesome. I bet you were great.”</p><p>And even though Willie already knows, even if Alex defiantly admitted it to him in the midst of a tearful apology on both sides, it’s still just the best feeling to hear Willie so on board with the whole thing. Or at least most of the thing. The rest of it remains to be seen.</p><p>“I was terrified,” Alex admits. “I was so afraid of messing it up.”</p><p>“Nah, man, I’m sure you killed it. You’re a great listener,” Willie says, punching Alex on the arm. A very bro-y gesture; maybe not a promising sign.</p><p>“I just… I don’t know what it’s like to be queer in 2020,” Alex says. It’s not <em>frustrated, </em>exactly, but it is a little… okay, it’s frustrated. It’s frustrating. “Like, even that. Like, obviously some people used it for themselves in the 90s, but it wasn’t <em>the </em>default term. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s cool, but –“</p><p>Willie kicks his legs out in front of him, board balanced on his thighs, leaning back against the stone step, which would probably hurt if they still felt pain. “Hey, woah, bro, it’s alright. I get it, you know? When I first woke up, I was totally lost. I had no idea what was okay or not okay, and I didn’t have a lifer to help me out. I had to learn all that stuff, too.”</p><p>And that’s the thing, because that <em>could </em>so easily be the same <em>stuff </em>Alex is still figuring out, but it could just as easily be the future in general.</p><p>“But it’s kinda weird in reverse too. Like, Julie didn’t know what PFLAG was, and that was <em>huge</em>, you know? The first person who ever hugged me because I was gay and they wanted to let me know that was okay was someone else’s mom,” Alex says, shaking his head at how far way that memory seems. That grey-haired, kind-faced woman who held him as he cried because he hadn’t felt so cared for in years was probably dead. Just like him. Just like Willie. And so, because Julie is brave and Alex used to be, twenty-five years ago, he says, “the second person was you.”</p><p>Willie shoves at him, but – and this might be wishful thinking – his smile is a little shyer, a little more secretive. “I didn’t hug you to tell you it’s okay to be gay.”</p><p>“Then why –“</p><p>“Let’s go together,” Willie says abruptly, and Alex is so blindsided by the change of subject that for a minute he doesn’t understand what Willie’s talking about. “It’s pretty corporate these days, but if we pop up to San Francisco it’s almost like what it used to be.”</p><p>Alex feels his heart swoop in his chest and knows that if he still breathed oxygen, it would have suddenly just gotten a lot more difficult. Willie goes to pride. Willie <em>went </em>to pride, maybe around the same time Alex did. And yeah, Willie likes music, he likes crowds and festivities, but it never used to be <em>just </em>a party, and if Willie’s not the activist-type and he <em>still </em>went –</p><p>“Do you go every year, then?” Alex manages. Totally casual. Doesn’t matter what the answer is; just curious. Casual.</p><p>Willie looks down at the board cradled across his knees as he speaks, a flimsy barrier between their hands but a barrier all the same. “I used to. I never went when I was alive, so it was nice to see it without worrying about <em>being </em>seen. But now it’s a lot of families and kids, which is great, obviously, but – it started to make me feel really alone.”</p><p>History was never Alex’s strongest subject – not that queer history was on the curriculum anyway, but even if it was. But he remembers the guys a few years older than him, the ones he gravitated towards at shows and after-parties, and how careful they always were never to say anything outright. Even among friends, even where it was safe, they always hedged. Never <em>I love you, I want you, </em>always <em>I think you’re great, I care about you – </em></p><p>Oh.</p><p>Alex is an idiot. Or he’s let 2020 get to him and forgotten his roots.</p><p>He laughs, relieved and a little chagrined. “I guess after twenty-five years my gaydar is a little rusty.”</p><p>It feels like a leap, just a second of air before the parachute kicks in with Willie’s smile and Alex knows that rusty or not, he got there in the end.</p><p>“Should I have worn a handkerchief?” Willie asks, with the mischievous tilt of his brows that Alex fell for in the first place. Alex blinks, laughs, and feels himself grin broader when Willie laughs with him.</p><p>“You <em>never,</em>” he accuses, and then, because this feels like an in-joke and Willie is probably the only person he’ll ever get to make it with, he adds, “Julie <em>definitely </em>wouldn’t know what that was.”</p><p>“Nah, wouldn’t have fit with my style. Not enough denim. And, you know, I was super closeted,” Willie says.</p><p>“Luke went through a pocket-bandana phase. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.” Alex rakes a rueful hand through his hair. “I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on it. This, not Luke.”</p><p>Willie knocks their knees together, like he knocked elbows with Alex on the night Alex finally, <em>finally </em>got to come out for real. Only this time, it’s a promise, not a <em>things will be okay </em>promise but a <em>things are about to get so much better </em>one.</p><p>“Because you were a badass fuck-you queer punk rocker and you forgot not all of us were?” he says, grinning.</p><p>That’s a pretty generous characterization, Alex thinks. “Or because I was a scared-shitless kid too afraid of being wrong to tell a guy I liked him.”</p><p>“I don’t know about this <em>was</em>; I haven’t heard you confess anything to anyone yet,” Willie says, laughing so that Alex knows <em>he </em>knows; he’s just been waiting for Alex to say it this whole time. Like maybe he wanted Alex to be the brave one.</p><p>“Okay.” Alex turns, taking both of Willie’s hands in his, uncaring when the skateboard clatters to the driveway between their feet. “Do you wanna go to pride with me?”</p><p>Willie’s grin is blinding. Alex doesn’t know why he waited so long.</p><p>“Heck yeah.” Willie reconsiders, mock-serious. “But that had better not be our first date.”</p><p>This is so <em>easy; </em>Alex never imagined it could be easy. That having a crush could be something other than terrifying, that it could be just like having a friend who you also, hopefully, get to kiss. “I think our first date was yelling in museum. Or when you ran me over and then we sat at a bus stop for three hours.”</p><p>“Knocked the breath right outta you, huh?” Willie says, looking much too proud of a pretty terrible joke.</p><p>“<em>Stop,” </em>Alex says, tugging Willie towards him by their joined hands, and Willie goes, shoulders pressed together, so close Alex’s heart is maybe going to just give out. “We are not old enough to be making dad jokes.”</p><p>“I hate to break it to you, but we so are.” Willie lights up, suddenly, and his thighs tense like he wants to jump up and pace like he does when he’s excited, but Alex keeps him there. He’s not letting Willie leave, not right now, and Willie grins at him like he knows Alex’s thoughts. “But hey, you know what this means?”</p><p>“We get to make out now?” Please, please let it be that.</p><p>“Okay, given, but <em>after </em>that we gotta get you in shape so we can skate along with Dykes on Bikes.”</p><p>Alex groans. Sure, yeah, that’d be cool, but… “My thighs have <em>just </em>stopped hurting.”</p><p>“Exercise keeps you young.”</p><p>Alex doesn’t care what else happens in his afterlife, so long as he gets to keep seeing Willie smile like that. He doesn’t even mind when Luke and Reggie poof back into existence beside them, with a “you’re <em>still </em>not kissing him? You’re hopeless, dude.”</p><p>“Since you care so much,” Alex says, rolling his eyes at them, and turns to Willie, a question on his lips. Willie steals it away before he can speak it.</p><p>Dimly, Alex thinks, I am kissing a man, in front of people, and the world is still turning. I’m kissing a dude in front of <em>Luke and Reggie</em>, because they teased me for not doing it, and they’re cheering me on, I can hear it, why won’t they <em>go inside </em>and let me keep doing it.</p><p>This is crazy.</p><p>“Crazy <em>good</em>,” Willie corrects, pressing another quick, gentle kiss to Alex’s mouth. And, yeah. That’s a better word for it.</p><p>“I gotta say,” Reggie says, to Luke, “he’s hotter than you, dude.”</p><p>“He is <em>not,” </em>Alex hears Luke say. “I’ll prove it to you.”</p><p>Willie leans his forehead against Alex’s, laughing, and says, only for Alex to hear, “straight guys, right?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Alex says, but frankly, he doesn’t care what Luke and Reggie are doing, because Willie kisses him again, and Willie is the entire world right now.</p><p>Chalk another one up for 2020.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Don't google the handkerchief code if you wanna keep your experience of this fic T-rated; do google Dykes on Bikes because they're rad.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title is from "Someday" by All-4-One, but more specifically from the Hunchback of Notre Dame soundtrack.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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